


Better to reign in Hell, than to serve in Heaven

by ars_belli



Category: Exiles Saga and Galactic Milieu - Julian May
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-17
Updated: 2017-08-12
Packaged: 2018-04-26 20:56:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5020222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ars_belli/pseuds/ars_belli
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Here, under his aegis, Mental Man would burgeon and flourish and expand His bright dominion from star to star through the aeons to come, the all-conquering and immortal Mind.  And in six million years, there would remain not a trace of Him.</i><br/><i>He could not pray for the desired outcome. He wondered: Can I will it?</i><br/>In which Marc proves himself the Adversary and events in the Pliocene take a different path.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The aria which Cloud sings is [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AX1kHnZ9wmM) from Wagner's _Der Fliegende Hollander_. The Marc-Cloud duet from later in the same opera is [this one](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpWeWS9TroM). The fic title is stolen from Milton's _Paradise Lost_.

_Here, under his aegis, Mental Man would burgeon and flourish and expand His bright dominion from star to star through the aeons to come, the all-conquering and immortal Mind._  
_And in six million years, there would remain not a trace of Him._  
_He could not pray for the desired outcome. It did not exist and would not. He wondered: Can I will it?_  


The possibility would not be expelled from his consciousness. In the darkness, his mind picked at the fragmentary data like the scabs from the scalp electrodes of the CE rig, though the latter healed infinitely more swiftly. In the morning, his fingers brushed the slip of paper between saucer and teacup, unable to fling it away. She had given him the concept _and yet she did nothing._ The single Magnate of the Concillium who remained loyal to the Rebel cause had not come to convince him of it, even while the prophet wearied of his own religion. _Would not._ Yet if he had convinced himself of the futility of it all, why did he remain singularly unable to coerce this insubstantial hypothesis of success into oblivion? Try as he might, Marc Remillard was unable to fulfil Brother Anatoly's trust in him, to bring the absolution to its natural conclusion. He was Wotan: king of the gods check-mated by a trickster, while his precious Siegmund and Sieglinde had made it clear that they would die rather than bend to his will. He had lost. The very future whence he had come told him that, indubitably. Inevitably!  
_Much easier to give up, isn't it? Still tempting to run off to hide in Black Crag ivorytower and pursue blacktorcDISTRACTION until Tanu and Firvulag Gotterdammerung instead of continuing your life's work…_  
Wearily, his mind responded.  
_I did not send for you._  
Yet he paced to the end of the captain's cabin and opened it regardless.  
"No? You didn't have to let me in, Marc. It's not as if I have the dirigentine ability to kick you off the planet on a whim anymore—or the watts!—although if you keep to your current course, our new Dirigent might seriously consider exercising that perk of her office!"  
The single remaining disciple of Mental Man brushed past him, psychic aura as warm and comforting as a large vat of liquid nitrogen. Morale amongst his associates had long since hit rock-bottom and continued to free-fall into the Earth's mantle, he considered wearily. At his PK nudge, the small eating unit dispensed tea. Marc busied himself with the milk jug and sugar bowl and ritual tea implements before taking the remaining seat at the small table.  
"Jealousy does not become you, Pat," he remarked wryly. "I have gained the trust of our new Dirigent, as she styles herself, and in doing so occupied her with the redaction of half the gold-torced Tanu in the Pliocene. Our new King of the Many-Coloured Land will soon find Gotterdammerung more pressing than any time-gate construction. Felice is unlikely to have a change of heart and emerge from the Room without Doors… Who is left to oppose us but Alex Manion?"  
Patricia Castellane blew on her tea in silence. The images of the dynamic field specialist's last chess move replayed before them, that had cost them their chief redactors and so many of the Magnates vital to any metaconcert effort. _Should we be pleased with Helayne's killing spree? Only the childless rebels are loyal—perhaps! Fewer parents left to betray us now._ Marc's mind displayed the grim irony.  
"Who is left to oppose _what_ , Marc?" she cried. "Two billion people I lost on Okanagon. Two billion, and for what, if we don't continue?"  
He surged to his feet, three strides taking him the length of the cabin. Upon his return, a large slug of Louis XIII fortified both of their cups with cognac. For a long while, the pair let the tea cool in silence. Eventually the admission seeped through Marc's mental armour despite himself.  
_I don't know._  
Marc lifted the tea to his lips and abruptly set it down again. Patricia untangled his fingers from their death-grip on the fragile china. Her hands were warm. The motion displaced the small slip of paper containing a single word. _Lylmik._  
"You do," she corrected gently. "The star-search proves it. Not a single star in spectral types from F to K with a coadunate mental signature. The Lylmik homeworld _must_ lie on the main sequence now, Warshaw's psychophysical evolution models proved that, to fit with the fact that even the Krondakau have no history of the race that brought them to Unity. Even Jack knew, the pro-chronistic mutant with mental assay closer to the long-chain molecules than his own race!"  
His mouth lifted in the famous smile.  
_Ought I pretend to have a choice in the matter? Mental Man will succeed because it always has. The irony appeals, one must admit. The Angel of the Abyss defeated by his own creation!_  
"Guarantee of success or not, we still require a plan of action," said the former Planetary Dirigent.  
Her mind opened freely at the slightest coercive probe. The plan had all the elegance of a metaconcert in miniature. Perhaps he could will the great plan after all.  



	2. Chapter 2

The slim figure did not flinch from the storm. Instead she sat alone on the marble bench in the gardens of Castle Gateway. The white stormsuit hood was thrown back in defiance of the wind, her red-gold hair soaked in rain and her mind in negative ions. A blast of sheet lightening shook the aether. A more sensible being might have retreated in the face of the onslaught on normal and ultrasenses alike. Instead, the grand-daughter of Teresa Kendall erupted into song:  
_Johohoe! Johohohoe!_  
_Hohohoe! Johoe!_  
_Have you met the ship at sea_  
_with blood-red sails and black mast?_  
_On the high deck, the pale man,_  
_the master of the ship, keeps endless watch._  
_Hui! How the wind howls - Yohohey!_  
_Hui! How it whistles in the rigging, Yohohey!_  
_Hui! Like an arrow he flies,_  
_without aim, without rest, without peace!_  
The mournful ballad was her own time-gate. The thunder subsided before the four-fold melody of the fire-moths, the smell of wet grass gave way to the jungle odour of the tropics, even the air tasted of the rich oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere of a long-destroyed cosmop world. _Thanks to Papa and Pat Castellane and the rest of them!_ Even if she were to go home, neither she nor Hagen would ever go _home_.  


Home was the warmth of hot-buttered rum and the crackle of a record as the remaining exiles caroled at Christmas; the shade of the observatory in the jungle heat of Florida, paths fragrant with Alex Manion's carefully-tended flowers; the auras of Elaby and Jill and however-many dead friends and parents and children of Rebellion. The soprano pushed aside such gloomy thoughts, relentlessly pursuing the mournful notes of Wagner's melody. How often had she spied on her parents, projecting the scene of a darkened opera box and the story on the stage for Hagen and herself, while the operant nanny had snoozed before the Tri-D? They had promised each other that one day, the two of them might watch the experience unfold in person. All she had to do was return through the time-gate with the rest of them and atone for her sins… Was that all?  


She let her mind retreat from its path and wander freely amongst the mood of the old aria.  
_It is I who will save you with my true love!_  
_May God's angel show me to you!_  
_Through me you shall find grace!_  
Cloud Remillard drew a cautious breath, expelling the fragmentary memories: Uncle Rogi and nanny Mitsuko—and Cyndia, though every time she conjured an image of her mother, all Cloud saw was herself. She withdrew slowly from the explosive force of Senta's Ballade and its triumphant finale. Eyes and farsight closed, she smiled into the rain.  


So it was that she was defenceless against the visitor. The unexpected baritone seemed conjured from the sexternion fields themselves, with a brooding, coercive presence all its own:  
_As from the mist of times long gone_  
_this girl's image speaks to me:_  
_as I dreamt of her for restless ages,_  
_I see her now before my eyes…_  
_The dull glow I feel burning here,_  
_can I in my misery call it love?_  
_Ah, no! It is a yearning for redemption:_  
_would that through such an angel it came true!_  
Marc stood before her. The aspect of Abaddon in his black CE coverall was quite untouched by the storm. _Excorporeal excursion alone, not a D-jump._ The realisation loosened the sharp ache in her chest. Her mind-aspect smiled upon the Dutchman's great duet with the heroine Senta. Whatever propelled her to join the duet was not coercion. Her aura shone bright with trepidation, yet the notes rang unaffected.  
_He stands before me, his face lined with suffering,_  
_it reveals his terrible grief to me:_  
_can deep pity's voice lie to me?_  
_As I have often seen him, here he stands._  
_The pain that burns within my breast,_  
_ah, this longing, how shall I name it?_  
_What you yearn for, salvation,_  
_would it came true, poor man, through me!_  
The pair sank into metaconcert, oblivious to the outside world.  


Marc broke the truce first.  
"The Milieu will never permit it!"  
His daughter's fingers clenched around the slick marble of the bench. A snippet of Dr. Warshaw's lecture on the Milieu government hung between them.  
"Magnates-at-large can pursue any occupation they choose, true," he admitted.  
Yet the mind of Abaddon displayed Owen Blanchard's old grief. It was not the greatest injustice that the Lylmik overlords had forced the virtuoso into rho-field design and shackled him to the Twelfth Fleet rather than the concert hall—but it was the first—and the very seed of the Rebellion.  
"Suppose that your Paramount metafaculties are not put to use by the Human Polity," her father began cautiously, "and that by some extraordinary Lylmik veto you do become a soprano. Will you have the strength to be 'Teresa Kendall's grand-daughter' for the rest of your life?"  
_Better than being Abaddon's daughter!_  
Her outburst merely provoked Marc to sit beside her on the bench. A burst of PK pushed wet strands of hair from her face. She sent a brief telepathic thanks, the merest shadow of the mental ease they had shared earlier.  
"Is that why Hagen is afraid?" her father probed.  
Mutely, she shook her head. _Elizabeth says that UnityAffirmation will remove the stigma. 'Ego te absolvo' on a Galactic scale instead of a confessional box. Easier for the other children of Rebellion than us, she admits. Hagen's feardepressionHamletesquerie is all from the thought of returning alone! Idiotbrother thinks that I will stay here with Kuhal Tanufairyprince Earthshaker!_ She bit her lip to stifle the mental outburst. A drop of blood glinted in another flash of lightening. The EE image of her father sat unmoving, patiently anticipating further data.  
"I reassured him that Kuhal must return to the Milieu with me," Cloud whispered.  
"He will be one of the leaders required for the new union he envisions: of Firvulag and Tanu sharing a cosmop world of their own. The Peace Faction agree, but they cannot lead themselves, not without someone from the High Table."  
"And what does your fairy prince think of you dragging him through the time-gate?" Marc asked mildly.  
"Me? Kuhal agrees that it is his duty to do the best by both species. Anyone can stay in Aiken's kingdom in his place. Of course he'll go to the Milieu."  
_Not what I asked, Marcdaughter._ The eyes of the black-garbed simulacrum shone with laughter. _He loves you, he says. It always sounds good._  
"You loved Cyndia, you said." _And me!_  
"As Cyndia loved me," he replied softly.  
_She loved her duty to the human race more, despite her support of the rebellion. I could not make her see. The same choice is yours and Hagen's, why must you take her path?_ The old, invincible will reasserted itself. The stream of consciousness was cut off. Cloud quashed the possibility before it could subside into her subconscious, that Kuhal's duty to the Tanu would be an easier prospect here in the familiar than six million years in the future. Surely he would go wherever she followed, if he truly did love her…  
"Isn't it always the ones we love who hurt us the most?" Abaddon said.  
_Papa, of course our decision hurts. For all of us._ Yet he still flinched from her mental embrace. She persisted, carefully secreting her father's despair into the lowest, deepest echelons of her mind. His mind opened to her: Teresa's box of ashes, eerie in the Hawaiian cave; the second-hand recollection of Laura Tremblay's suicide, body frozen like her heart; lying in the dunes with Jack and his innocent, mind-supernova of questions and the realisation of poor cousin Addy. Cyndia.  
_Why must it be both of you?_  
Wearily, the daughter of Abaddon rose from the bench. Her joints were stiff from the cold marble. A longing for Hagen's creative power twinged in her mind, not for the first time. Marc held out a hand to her, warmth and heat and endorphins flowing into her system. She raised her palm to his in the familiar operant gesture.  


Marc was quite solid and very real.  


_Aiken PROMISED no D-jumping how did the sigma fail how did you pass the airlock when shapeshift cannot copy NonbornKingMPIdent should have been impossible to enter by guile have we LOST already was this FALSEmercy only to see if HagenandI accept Mental Man without force—_  
The coercive-redactive probe was excruciating and brief. A final redactive pulse made her forget the mind-ream entirely, and soon she had forgotten the forgetting as well. He kissed her gently on the forehead and vanished into the aether.  



	3. Chapter 3

Elizabeth stood with Brother Anatoly on the balcony of the chateau at Black Crag. Despite his lack of redaction, the old monk surely sensed his companion's anxiety. Why else would he talk so much?  
"If you are going to continue quoting _Paradise Lost_ , Brother, then I'll send you off in search of more Remy Martin!" she chided.  
Anatoly didn't flinch at her temper.  
"Why, does Remillard need something stronger than communion wine to be absolved from his sins? After all the grandstanding and issuing of ultimata, both sides still want to talk. Doesn't that give you the slightest confidence that perhaps a poor old monk knows a rueful sinner when he sees one?"  
Both of them drew from the large bowl of popped corn, despite it being a peace ration for all comers. The pair were merely earlier comers than the rest, the old devil had reasoned, so she had followed suit. While Elizabeth crunched, her farsense ranged into the aether in search of the Adversary, despite the overwhelming noise from the solar corona.  
"You can't see him or his devil rig, can you?"  
Anatoly didn't wait for a reply, instead welcoming the three guests who had swept onto the stone terrace. He left the task of greeting their other guest to _her_.

The now-familiar black armoured shape materialised in the courtyard below. The casual display of power never failed to startle her. So much power, so much potential for good, wasted by the failure of the Galactic Mind to compromise with the Metapsychic Rebels before the overt phase of the fighting…  
_I doubted that you would come!_  
The familiar, magnetic voice echoed in her skull, with all the charm of a Paramount coercer. The resulting outraged cacophony from the three visitors shook the aether. She erected a mental umbrella to direct the worst of it harmlessly into the clouds.  
"I asked you to neutral ground," she began, "because Marc is willing to agree to a truce."  
Aiken's mental aura displayed a healthy dose of wariness, swiftly overwhelming any lingering surprise. Marc's children were mind-bright with apprehension. Their father switched to non-mental speech:  
"Had I intended any of you harm, surely I would have destroyed Castle Gateway already. Cloud can attest to that!"  
Cloud affirmed wryly that her father could now penetrate the 900x sigma protecting the time-gate site and the apparatus. Even so, the challenger of the galaxy looked remarkably innocuous in Brother Anatoly's tattered silk robe and gardening boots.  
"Dress up all you like, Remillard! You've lost, haven't you? An EE stunt with judicious creativity, I'll bet!" grinned Aiken.  
The tall figure gave an inimitably Gallic shrug and dropped easily into one of the wicker chairs.  
"Perhaps you should ask our Farsensing Grand Master here, Aiken. Or you can just go to King Sharn and Queen Ayfa directly and enquire about the eighty-thousand strong metaconcert that's exhausted their Firvulag so close to the games."  
Marc displayed the configuration for them all to see.  
"Have you brought us here to drag us all with you? You must know that you can't win, not without killing us!" Hagen snapped.  
He stood behind Cloud's chair, fingers tapping restlessly against the cane. It stopped at his sister's brief coercive impulse.  
"I will not oppose the opening of the time-gate," Marc conceded softly.  
"God!" Hagen exploded. "We can go home, really!"  
Trembling, his son sank into the chair Anatoly offered.  
"No," Marc said. "Not you, nor Cloud."  
Aiken's psychocreative force-field enveloped the pair at once. The figure in the golden suit rose abruptly. Elizabeth had no weapon to match him but her reason.  
_Marc has changed. Anatoly's absolution has changed him._  
The idea was extraordinary enough to deter Aiken for the merest instant. He did not suppress the torrent of mental scorn:  
_Are we supposed to see that this is not the same man who led the Rebellion? That a few words from a normal have turned Marc to the side of the angels when his own brother could not?_  
"Marc and I have come to an agreement," the unofficial Dirigent offered, "A truce that will prevent us from destroying the Many-Coloured Land."  
The soft tones of her reason calmed the aether. No more mental or physical outbursts interrupted her _precis._ The entire scheme was greeted with quiet incredulity. The former preceptor couldn't help but think that this was hardly a reassuring prelude to peace in the Many-Coloured Land.  


"So everyone gets what they want…except your own children."  
Marc raised an eyebrow at the golden king's words. He made no move to interrupt beyond munching at the available nibbles.  
"If it's compromise you want Remillard, how about this? The Milieu authorities don't have the slightest chance of turning you over to the Magistratum, not without the Lylmik overlords chasing your D-jumping rig all over the friggerty Galaxy! We'll open the time-gate for you—but we'll leave it open, both ends of it! My subjects will be given the right to leave, just as the Milieu gave them the right to enter."  
_Operants may not leave the Milieu._ Abaddon's tone was wry. _Don't we know this better than anyone else?_  
"Why not put Papa to the test?" Cloud asked. "Without both sets of germ plasm, Papa cannot create Mental Man, even if he wanted to. He admitted as much himself, to all of us. I will stay in the Pliocene with Kuhal—but only if Hagen can leave with Diane. If the time-gate stays open…perhaps I can persuade you to direct my own future in a later group of time-travellers."  
Cloud and Hagen exchanged subvocal murmurings on the intimate mode. Regardless of their mental screens, the clutch of their hands showed what little chance either of them gave that last thought.  
"I am willing to show good faith. I have released Kyllikki and its crew to attend the Grand Tourney. If they like King Aiken's barbarian kingdom, they are welcome to stay. I'll not persuade them otherwise," declared the former leader of the Metapsychic Rebels.  


The mental backing and filing continued while the sun dipped beneath the horizon. In the end, all their minds showed assent.  



	4. Chapter 4

In the courtyard of Castle Gateway, a small group of people met for the last time. Aiken in his suit of gold pockets and Elizabeth in the old red jumpsuit, both of them clinging stubbornly to memories of the auberge; Hagen in convential 23rd century spacer's suit; and Cloud and himself in the white stormsuits of the Pliocene. He himself had carefully avoided any hint of the CE rig.  
As if to break the gloom of contemplative silence, Hagen began to tick off points on his fingers.  
"All the Metapsychic Rebels become good little subjects of King Aiken-Lugonn! He doesn't have gold torcs for the lot of them, but you'll work something out… Mental Man is finished because Elizabeth believes your word that you're _terribly sorry_. The children of Rebellion and God-knows how many Tanu and Firvulag leave the Pliocene if they want. We just can't come back."  
He collapsed grimly onto his rucksack.  
"Why not?" Aiken questioned suddenly. "Operants can travel to wherever the hell they want in the Milieu: why not whenever too? If Elizabeth offers to act as official Dirigent to the Pliocene, it can be considered part of the Milieu—but in the new Tanu-Firvulag Polity. First Magnate Kuhal will let us play by our own rules, I'll see to that!"  
Marc watched his daughter's aura dim in grief. He placed a hand on her shoulder, eschewing any redactive assistance. She had recovered in her own way from Elaby Gathen, why not Kuhal Earthshaker as well? He would wait until she asked for his help. Then, free from any other influences, he might—he would—convince her of the destiny which awaited her. He had millions of years, if they needed them.  
" _If_ Elizabeth wants the job, _if_ the Lylmik agree to it…" He shrugged. "Why not indeed? I'll get Pat Castellane to exmine all the loopholes."  
Aiken grinned at Elizabeth's scandalised mental exclamation.  
"It looks like you've just got yourself a full staff too! Wouldn't that be a shock to the Milieu: the former Rebels running a provincial dirigent's office in six million BC. You _do_ need a deputy to run rings around the Magistratum, and God knows the cosmop dirigents excel at that."  
He raised an eyebrow at the preceptor-turned-Dirigent. _If you must,_ he projected resignedly. _She has learned from her past mistakes—though I'll leave Anatoly to convince you of that!_  
So she had. What better way to learn the damage done by a few, trusted advisors than to suffer from it? The pair of them could replicate Hydra's careful distortion of the great project for its own ends. Especially now that his mind no longer baulked at redacting the effects of Cyndia's betrayal. 


End file.
